Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Dirty equipment puts 10,000 at risk for HIV and Hepatitis- They offer free tests

Seattle Children’s hospital admits they didn’t have proper cleaning procedures and their dirty equipment could potentially infect over 10,000 children with HIV and Hepatitis A, B & C. But they’re offering free blood tests (how kind) to see if any kids now are Hep or HIV+ because of their carelessness and negligence.

Hospital’s Dirty Equipment

I cannot believe that this hospital let their spokesperson smile while he talked about potentially affected 10,000 (or maybe more) children with HIV or Hep C which are potentially fatal. You think he might cut the smile at least for the video.

I have already talked with one child hood friend whose little girl goes to their hospital for treatment. I’m sure they are not pleased and it must be beyond scary for these kids to go in and get blood tests and then wait however long until their tests come back positive or negative.

How long weren’t procedures followed that it’s at least 10,000 children who could be potentially infected? That seems like a long time?  I am curious if criminal action is taken against a hospital for this kind of negligence?

From the article

The hospital said Wednesday that they recently discovered that required procedures for cleaning and sterilizing surgical instruments at Seattle Children’s Bellevue Clinic and Surgery Center were not always followed.

The hospital says the risk to patients is extremely low, but “we don’t know the exact risk to each patient. We are contacting patients and offering a free blood test to those who we think may have been affected. ”

“Our patients’ safety is our top priority and we are very sorry that this happened. We are investigating exactly how this failure occurred and expect the investigation to be complete this week,” the hospital said in a news release.

Can you imagine if a holistic doctor (say an acupuncturist) were to reuse needles or not clean their equipment? I suspect they’d try and lock them up for life if something like that were to ever occur. Oh, and of course they’d be immediately shut down.

But it appears to be business at usual at the hospital with unsanitary equipment that could leave children’s lives changed (or shortened) and a smile on the face of their spokesperson (whatever his position) as he talks about such a serious matter.

In my series of articles lately I’m usually pretty unbiased, but this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I’m not into lawsuits, but I hope even the thousands who are potentially affected (even if they’re found to be negative) form together and do a big nice class action against this irresponsible facility for what they have to go through.

Again my heart goes out to all families of any potential victims. The mere fact they have to go in and get HIV and Hepatitis tests makes them all victims in my eyes.